Page:Ballads, Stevenson, 1890.djvu/51

 There was never a foot on the floor, there was never a whisper of speech;

Only the leering tikis stared on the blinding beach.

Again were the mountains fired, again the morning broke;

And all the houses lay still, but the house of the priest awoke.

Close in their covering roofs lay and trembled the clan,

But the agéd, red-eyed priest ran forth like a lunatic man;

And the village panted to see him in the jewels of death again,

In the silver beards of the old and the hair of women slain.

Frenzy shook in his limbs, frenzy shone in his eyes,

And still and again as he ran, the valley rang with his cries.

All day long in the land, by cliff and thicket and den,

He ran his lunatic rounds, and howled for the flesh of men;

All day long he ate not, nor ever drank of the brook;

And all day long in their houses the people listened and shook—

All day long in their houses they listened with bated breath,

And never a soul went forth, for the sight of the priest was death.

Three were the days of his running, as the gods appointed of yore,

Two the nights of his sleeping alone in the place of gore:

The drunken slumber of frenzy twice he drank to the lees,

On the sacred stones of the High-place under the sacred trees;

With a lamp at his ashen head he lay in the place of the feast,

And the sacred leaves of the banyan rustled around the priest.

Last, when the stated even fell upon terrace and tree,

And the shade of the lofty island lay leagues away to sea, 39